Recently, there has been a trend to downsize memory cells to improve memory capacity. Such downsizing creates potential difficulties in the programming of memory cells. For example, downsizing may result in a greater number of manufacturing defects, such as shorting between adjacent word lines, shorting between word lines and interconnects, shorting between word lines and the substrate, broken word lines, etc. These defects often result in corruption of data stored on word lines during the programming process. Additionally, these defects result in variations in the speed of programming of memory cells. As a result, programming differently-located memory cells may take differing amounts of time.